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Positional faithfulness in Harmonic Grammar

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 February 2018

MIRANDA MCCARVEL  and
AARON KAPLAN
MIRANDA MCCARVEL*
Affiliation:
University of Utah
AARON KAPLAN*
Affiliation:
University of Utah
*
Author’s address: University of Utah, Languages and Communication Building 255 S. Central Campus Drive Room 2300, Salt Lake City, UT 84112, USAmiranda.mccarvel@utah.edu
Author’s address: University of Utah, Languages and Communication Building 255 S. Central Campus Drive Room 2300, Salt Lake City, UT 84112, USAa.kaplan@utah.edu
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Abstract

In Tamil, coronals are licensed in onsets and initial syllables, exemplifying what Jesney (2011b) calls Licensing in Multiple Contexts (LMC). Jesney shows that while only positional faithfulness produces LMC in Optimality Theory, positional licensing provides a competing analysis of LMC in Harmonic Grammar (HG). This suggests that positional faithfulness may not be necessary in HG. We argue, though, that positional faithfulness remains essential. First, other facts in Tamil are incompatible with the positional licensing approach to LMC, rendering the positional faithfulness alternative the only viable analysis. Second, only with positional faithfulness can certain typological generalizations concerning assimilation between consonants be captured.

Keywords

Harmonic GrammarOptimality Theorypositional licensingpositional faithfulnessTamil
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Linguistics , Volume 55 , Issue 1 , 01 February 2019 , pp. 123 - 159
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

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Footnotes

We would like to thank audiences at the University of Utah, Phonology 2013, NELS 44, and the 2014 Annual Meeting of the LSA for feedback on this work. We would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers at the Journal of Linguistics whose feedback was invaluable. Abbreviations in glosses follow the Leipzig Glossing Rules. In addition, emphatic is abbreviated emph.

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